Background and Evolution

noun

• A person's social heritage: previous experience or training.
  • usage: "he is a lawyer with a sports background"
• The part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foreground.
  • usage: "he posed her against a background of rolling hills"
  • synonyms: ground
• Information that is essential to understanding a situation or problem.
  • usage: "the embassy filled him in on the background of the incident"
  • synonyms: background knowledge
• Extraneous signals that can be confused with the phenomenon to be observed or measured.
  • usage: "they got a bad connection and could hardly hear one another over the background signals"
  • synonyms: background signal
• Relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation.
  • usage: "when the rain came he could hear the sound of thunder in the background"
• The state of the environment in which a situation exists.
  • usage: "you can't do that in a university setting"
  • synonyms: setting, scope
• Computer science. ( the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appear)
  • synonyms: desktop, screen background
• Scenery hung at back of stage.
  • synonyms: backdrop, backcloth

verb

• Understate the importance or quality of.
  • usage: "he played down his royal ancestry"
  • synonyms: play down, downplay

• (n.) Ground in the rear or behind or in the distance, as opposed to the foreground or the ground in front.
• (n.) A place in obscurity or retirement or out of sight.
• (n.) The space which is behind and subordinate to a portrait or group of figures.
• (n.) Anything behind, serving as a foil; as, the statue had a background of red hangings.

noun

• A process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage (especially a more advanced or mature stage. )
  • usage: "the development of his ideas took many years"; "the evolution of Greek civilization"; "the slow development of her skill as a writer"
  • synonyms: development
• Biology) the sequence of events involved in the evolutionary development of a species or taxonomic group of organisms. (.
  • synonyms: organic evolution, phylogeny, phylogenesis

• (n.) The formation of an involute by unwrapping a thread from a curve as an evolute.
• (n.) The act of unfolding or unrolling; hence, in the process of growth; development; as, the evolution of a flower from a bud or an animal from the egg.
• (n.) That theory of generation which supposes the germ to preexist in the parent, and its parts to be developed, but not actually formed, by the procreative act; -- opposed to epigenesis.
• (n.) That series of changes under natural law which involves continuous progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in structure, and from the single and simple to the diverse and manifold in quality or function. The pocess is by some limited to organic beings; by others it is applied to the inorganic and the psychical. It is also applied to explain the existence and growth of institutions, manners, language, civilization, and every product of human activity. The agencies and laws of the process are variously explained by different philosophrs.
• (n.) A general name for the history of the steps by which any living organism has acquired the morphological and physiological characters which distinguish it; a gradual unfolding of successive phases of growth or development.
• (n.) A series of things unrolled or unfolded.
• (n.) The extraction of roots; -- the reverse of involution.
• (n.) A prescribed movement of a body of troops or a vessel or fleet; any movement designed to effect a new arrangement or disposition; a maneuver.